I've googled and I'm just not getting it. Seems like such a simple function, but of course Lua doesn't have it.
In Python I would do
string = "cat,dog"
one, two = string.split(",")
and then I would have two variables, one = cat. two = dog
How do I do this in Lua!?
If you can use libraries, the answer is (as often in Lua) to use Penlight.
If Penlight is too heavy for you and you just want to split a string with a single comma like in your example, you can do something like this:
string = "cat,dog"
one, two = string:match("([^,]+),([^,]+)")